After Google said the Pixel 8 would not get Gemini Nano due to “hardware limitations”, it left a bad taste in a lot of people’s mouths. Google touts that the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro are both getting seven years of updates – OS, feature drops and security updates. But less than six months into the life cycle, the Pixel 8 loses out on a bit AI upgrade that the Pixel 8 Pro gets with virtually the same hardware?
Well, Google heard all of that backlash, and today, it is announcing that Gemini Nano will be available as a developer preview on Pixel 8 in the next Feature Drop. Google also says that Gemini Nano will power two expanded features on Pixel 8, which will include Summarize in Recorder and Smart Reply in Gboard.
Google began testing Gemini Nano on Pixel 8 after seeing LLMs running on phones with different memory specs
So, what was behind Google’s change of heart here? Well, Google is not going to say that they heard the complaints and have decided to try and get it working. Instead, Google is saying that they’ve “seen a lot of excitement from users and developers since Pixel 8 Pro became the first smartphone to get Gemini Nano last year.” Continuing on by saying that they’ve seen “large language models on phones with different memory specs can deliver different user experiences, so we have been testing and validating this on Pixel 8.”
Based on that, it sounds like the Gemini Nano features won’t be as robust on the Pixel 8 as they are on Pixel 8 Pro. Keep in mind that while both phones do run the same processor, they do also have different amounts of RAM. The Pixel 8 has 8GB of RAM while Pixel 8 Pro has 12GB of RAM. And running LLMs do require a good amount of memory.
The Made by Google podcast will explain this more in depth, and Seang Chau, Google’s VP of Engineering, will discuss Google’s approach to software updates in further detail.
